Coolangatta, Queensland
Encyclopedia
Coolangatta is the southernmost suburb of the Gold Coast
, Queensland
, Australia
. It has a population of 4,869 and is named after the schooner Coolangatta which was wrecked there in 1846.
Coolangatta and its immediate neighbouring "Twin Town" Tweed Heads
in New South Wales
have a shared economy. The Tweed River supports a thriving fishing fleet
, and the seafood
is a local specialty offered in the restaurants and clubs of the holiday and retirement region on both sides of the state border.
The Gold Coast Airport
, formerly known as Coolangatta Airport, is located at Coolangatta, with some of the runway going across the border into New South Wales.
. Once again focused on a steep headland at Point Danger the area was occupied by Europeans from at least 1828 by a convict station and red cedar
getters soon followed. Selectors followed in the 1860s and a small settlement at Coolangatta was established. In 1883 a township was surveyed.
to Tweed Heads in 1903 guaranteed the success of Coolangatta as a holiday township and it flourished from that time forward. Guesthouses and hotels were erected and a commercial centre soon followed.
Little remains of the earliest buildings at Coolangatta but some evidence remains of subsequent development in the early years of the twentieth century. The border fence and gates that until recently were a characteristic of the area have now been removed but the sense of the border remains at Boundary Street running along the ridge of the headland between Queensland and New South Wales. The headland itself is an important landmark and tourist destination. Coolangatta symbolises the terminus of the Gold Coast and the long strip of beach that begins at Main Beach
forty kilometres to the north.
To commemorate the centenary of the town, in 1984 a stone from the Coolangatta Estate
homestead was donated by the citizens of Coolangatta
near Berry, New South Wales
and was mounted on a plinth of granite from Aberdeen, Scotland, the birthplace of Alexander Berry
.
(Köppen climate classification
Cfa) with warm, wet summers and cool, moist winters. Although there is four times as much rainfall in March as there is in September, Coolongatta is still considered to have no dry season because there is more than a tenth of the rainfall of the wettest month in the driest month of the year.
of 83 feet (25.3 m) in length and 88 LT (89.4 t), Coolangatta was built by James Blinkcell in 1843 for Alexander Berry
whose property, Coolangatta Estate
, adjoined Coolangatta mountain located on the northern bank of the Shoalhaven River
, New South Wales.
Coolangatta was wrecked on Kirra
/ Bilinga Beach adjacent to a creek during a storm on Wednesday August 18, 1846.
On July 6, 1846, the ship sailed under Captain Steele from Brisbane, carrying two convict
prison
ers (George Craig in irons, and William George Lewis), to load red cedar logs at the Tweed River
for Sydney. Steele found the river entrance closed by silt
forming a bar
, so he anchored in the lee of Point Danger off Kirra Beach. Red cedar logs were then hauled overland from Terranora Inlet and rafted from the beach, but in six weeks less than half of the contracted 70,000 feet of red cedar had been loaded. Meanwhile, five ships loaded with red cedar were bar-bound inside the river.
On August 18, 1846, while Steel was ashore, a south-east gale blew up. Steele's boat was damaged while getting through the surf and he watched from the beach as the gale intensified. Eventually, the prisoners were freed and all hands abandoned ship and swam for shore as the anchors dragged. The ship parted its anchors and washed ashore near what was later called Coolangatta Creek.
The survivors walked 70 miles (112.7 km) north to Amity Point in six days, fed each night by different groups of friendly indigenous Australians
, and were taken into Brisbane onboard the Tamar.
Government survey
or Henry Schneider named the area Coolangatta while surveying in 1883 for the land auction in March 1884.
s, restored cars and revival bands playing music of the era.
In November 2010, after more than a year of careful deliberations The Wintersun Festival Committee entered into an agreement with Events NSW to stage the annual Wintersun Festival in regional NSW for initially the next three years. The Festival will not remain in the same location for two years in a row. http://www.wintersun.org.au/
Gold Coast, Queensland
Gold Coast is a coastal city of Australia located in South East Queensland, 94km south of the state capital Brisbane. With a population approximately 540,000 in 2010, it is the second most populous city in the state, the sixth most populous city in the country, and also the most populous...
, Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. It has a population of 4,869 and is named after the schooner Coolangatta which was wrecked there in 1846.
Coolangatta and its immediate neighbouring "Twin Town" Tweed Heads
Tweed Heads, New South Wales
Tweed Heads is a town located on the Tweed River in north-eastern New South Wales, Australia in Tweed Shire. Tweed Heads is located next to the border with Queensland, adjacent to the "Twin Town" of Coolangatta, a suburb of the Gold Coast...
in New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
have a shared economy. The Tweed River supports a thriving fishing fleet
Fishing fleet
A fishing fleet is an aggregate of commercial fishing vessels. The term may be used of all vessels operating out of a particular port, all vessels engaged in a particular type of fishing , or all fishing vessels of a country or region.Although fishing vessels are not formally organized as if they...
, and the seafood
Seafood
Seafood is any form of marine life regarded as food by humans. Seafoods include fish, molluscs , crustaceans , echinoderms . Edible sea plants, such as some seaweeds and microalgae, are also seafood, and are widely eaten around the world, especially in Asia...
is a local specialty offered in the restaurants and clubs of the holiday and retirement region on both sides of the state border.
The Gold Coast Airport
Gold Coast Airport
Gold Coast Airport, or Coolangatta Airport, is an Australian domestic and international airport on the Gold Coast and is located some south of Brisbane and 25 km south of Surfers Paradise. The entrance to the airport is situated in the suburb of Bilinga on the Gold Coast...
, formerly known as Coolangatta Airport, is located at Coolangatta, with some of the runway going across the border into New South Wales.
Early settlement
Coolangatta was one of the earliest settlements on the Gold CoastGold Coast, Queensland
Gold Coast is a coastal city of Australia located in South East Queensland, 94km south of the state capital Brisbane. With a population approximately 540,000 in 2010, it is the second most populous city in the state, the sixth most populous city in the country, and also the most populous...
. Once again focused on a steep headland at Point Danger the area was occupied by Europeans from at least 1828 by a convict station and red cedar
Toona ciliata
Australian Red Cedar , Toona ciliata is a forest tree in the family Meliaceae which grows throughout southern Asia from Afghanistan to Papua New Guinea and Australia. In Australia its natural habitat is now extensively cleared subtropical rainforests of New South Wales and Queensland...
getters soon followed. Selectors followed in the 1860s and a small settlement at Coolangatta was established. In 1883 a township was surveyed.
Border town
As a border town Coolangatta included a customs office, boatshed and government wharf. Extension of the railway from NerangNerang, Queensland
Nerang is a suburb on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, that lies upon the Nerang River. At the 2006 Census, Nerang had a population of 16,066....
to Tweed Heads in 1903 guaranteed the success of Coolangatta as a holiday township and it flourished from that time forward. Guesthouses and hotels were erected and a commercial centre soon followed.
Little remains of the earliest buildings at Coolangatta but some evidence remains of subsequent development in the early years of the twentieth century. The border fence and gates that until recently were a characteristic of the area have now been removed but the sense of the border remains at Boundary Street running along the ridge of the headland between Queensland and New South Wales. The headland itself is an important landmark and tourist destination. Coolangatta symbolises the terminus of the Gold Coast and the long strip of beach that begins at Main Beach
Main Beach, Queensland
Main Beach is a suburb on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. At the 2006 Census, Main Beach had a population of 3,324....
forty kilometres to the north.
To commemorate the centenary of the town, in 1984 a stone from the Coolangatta Estate
Coolangatta Estate
The Coolangatta Estate was established in 1822 by Alexander Berry. Born on St Andrew's Day 1783, the eldest child of a tenant farming family in Fife, he studied at the University of St Andrews and Edinburgh and qualified as a surgeon...
homestead was donated by the citizens of Coolangatta
Coolangatta, New South Wales
For the QLD town on the Gold Coast see Coolangatta, QueenslandCoolangatta is an historic area in Australia, on the north shore of the Shoalhaven River on the New South Wales south coast.Coolangatta is a local aboriginal word meaning "splendid view"....
near Berry, New South Wales
Berry, New South Wales
Berry is a small Australian town in the Shoalhaven region of the NSW South Coast in the state of New South Wales, located south of the state capital, Sydney. The indigenous people of the area were the Wodi Wodi people. In the 1810s, George William Evans, Government Surveyor, reported on the Berry...
and was mounted on a plinth of granite from Aberdeen, Scotland, the birthplace of Alexander Berry
Alexander Berry
Alexander Berry was a Scottish-born surgeon, merchant and explorer who in 1822 was given a land grant of 10,000 acres and 100 convicts to establish the first European settlement on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia.This settlement became known as the Coolangatta Estate and later...
.
Climate
Coolongatta has a humid subtropical climateHumid subtropical climate
A humid subtropical climate is a climate zone characterized by hot, humid summers and mild to cool winters...
(Köppen climate classification
Köppen climate classification
The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by Crimea German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen himself, notably in 1918 and 1936...
Cfa) with warm, wet summers and cool, moist winters. Although there is four times as much rainfall in March as there is in September, Coolongatta is still considered to have no dry season because there is more than a tenth of the rainfall of the wettest month in the driest month of the year.
Schooner Coolangatta
A topsail schoonerSchooner
A schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....
of 83 feet (25.3 m) in length and 88 LT (89.4 t), Coolangatta was built by James Blinkcell in 1843 for Alexander Berry
Alexander Berry
Alexander Berry was a Scottish-born surgeon, merchant and explorer who in 1822 was given a land grant of 10,000 acres and 100 convicts to establish the first European settlement on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia.This settlement became known as the Coolangatta Estate and later...
whose property, Coolangatta Estate
Coolangatta Estate
The Coolangatta Estate was established in 1822 by Alexander Berry. Born on St Andrew's Day 1783, the eldest child of a tenant farming family in Fife, he studied at the University of St Andrews and Edinburgh and qualified as a surgeon...
, adjoined Coolangatta mountain located on the northern bank of the Shoalhaven River
Shoalhaven River
The Shoalhaven River is a river rising from the Southern Tablelands and flowing into the ocean near Nowra on the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia.- History :...
, New South Wales.
Coolangatta was wrecked on Kirra
Kirra, Queensland
Kirra is a beachside suburb of the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. The small rocky headland Kirra Point separates Kirra beach to the north and Coolangatta beach to the south, and is noted as one of the world's premier surf breaks....
/ Bilinga Beach adjacent to a creek during a storm on Wednesday August 18, 1846.
On July 6, 1846, the ship sailed under Captain Steele from Brisbane, carrying two convict
Convict
A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison", sometimes referred to in slang as simply a "con". Convicts are often called prisoners or inmates. Persons convicted and sentenced to non-custodial sentences often are not termed...
prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
ers (George Craig in irons, and William George Lewis), to load red cedar logs at the Tweed River
Tweed River
Tweed River may refer to:*River Tweed, which flows from the Scottish Borders into the North Sea at Berwick-upon-Tweed, England, forming the border between Scotland and England along part of its route*River Tweed, Leicestershire in England...
for Sydney. Steele found the river entrance closed by silt
Silt
Silt is granular material of a size somewhere between sand and clay whose mineral origin is quartz and feldspar. Silt may occur as a soil or as suspended sediment in a surface water body...
forming a bar
Bar (landform)
A shoal, sandbar , or gravelbar is a somewhat linear landform within or extending into a body of water, typically composed of sand, silt or small pebbles. A spit or sandspit is a type of shoal...
, so he anchored in the lee of Point Danger off Kirra Beach. Red cedar logs were then hauled overland from Terranora Inlet and rafted from the beach, but in six weeks less than half of the contracted 70,000 feet of red cedar had been loaded. Meanwhile, five ships loaded with red cedar were bar-bound inside the river.
On August 18, 1846, while Steel was ashore, a south-east gale blew up. Steele's boat was damaged while getting through the surf and he watched from the beach as the gale intensified. Eventually, the prisoners were freed and all hands abandoned ship and swam for shore as the anchors dragged. The ship parted its anchors and washed ashore near what was later called Coolangatta Creek.
The survivors walked 70 miles (112.7 km) north to Amity Point in six days, fed each night by different groups of friendly indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
, and were taken into Brisbane onboard the Tamar.
Government survey
Geophysical survey
Geophysical survey is the systematic collection of geophysical data for spatial studies. Geophysical surveys may use a great variety of sensing instruments, and data may be collected from above or below the Earth's surface or from aerial or marine platforms. Geophysical surveys have many...
or Henry Schneider named the area Coolangatta while surveying in 1883 for the land auction in March 1884.
Wintersun Festival
Until 2010, each June Coolangatta hosted the Wintersun Festival, a two-week 1950s and 1960s nostalgia festival with free entertainment and attractions, including hot rodHot rod
Hot rods are typically American cars with large engines modified for linear speed. The origin of the term "hot rod" is unclear. One explanation is that the term is a contraction of "hot roadster," meaning a roadster that was modified for speed. Another possible origin includes modifications to or...
s, restored cars and revival bands playing music of the era.
In November 2010, after more than a year of careful deliberations The Wintersun Festival Committee entered into an agreement with Events NSW to stage the annual Wintersun Festival in regional NSW for initially the next three years. The Festival will not remain in the same location for two years in a row. http://www.wintersun.org.au/
External links
- University of Queensland: Queensland Places: Coolangatta
- Coolangatta: that's the place for me - music score, digitised and held by the State Library of Queensland
- Heritage Tour — Coolangatta
- Very GC — Coolangatta
- Coolangatta/Tugun Catholic Parish
- Tweed Heads Bowls Club